Dear project members, August has been a month with a good deal of
vacations for many of us, including yours truly. Therefore the monthly
report of DPL activities will be briefer than usual. Which is good, as
it'll leave all my readers more time to do NMUs and fix RC bugs!
Ongoing discussions
===================
- [Discussion][1] about the new trademark policy has continued on
-project. I've collected quite some feedback and summarized it in a
request for change that I've passed on to SFLC. I'm waiting for a
second draft from them, before reviving the thread.
- on the long-running issue of de-duplicating DebConf infrastructure wrt
Debian's, I've been happy to support the [proposal][2] of moving
DebConf's list to Debian's software and infrastructure. There seems to
be interest and consensus, but the DebConf team could probably use a
couple more helping hands to make it real
- starting from the practical need of dealing with minified JavaScript
files, an interesting [discussion][3] sparkled on -devel. It quickly
turned in both musing on the notion of archive-wide DFSG-freeness and
some new devscript tooling by Andreas Tille. AFAIU some extra testing
would be welcome
[1]: https://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2012/07/msg00047.html
[2]: http://lists.debconf.org/lurker/message/20120820.110812.1ec7d44b.en.html
[3]: https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2012/08/msg00365.html
Assets
======
- The DFGS-free logo relicensing I've mentioned last month is now on its
way. Following advice from SFLC, I've slightly patched the current
trademark policy (mainly to clarify scope), just enough to decouple
logo relicensing under LGPLv3/CC-BY-SA 3.0 from the finalization of a
new trademark policy (see above). I've also verified that the license
choice is fine with teams that regularly deal with the logos. Ball is
now in SPI camp (as copyright holder). They should finalize the
relicensing during the forthcoming board meeting, on September 13th.
- We heard back from the trademark office in Japan, who accepted our
request to transfer it from local Debian contributors to SPI. That
being mainly a bureaucratic acknowledgement, we'll now need to way for
a while until they confirm the transfer has been finalized. My eternal
thanks for help with this matter goes to Kenshi Muto.
Core teams
==========
- Manoj Srivastava has stepped down as tech-ctte member. I hereby thank
him for his long and valuable service in that capacity. The tech-ctte
has now one vacant seat, and I've encouraged present tech-ctte members
to propose to me a suitable candidate. In an attempt to promote
diversity of views within the tech-ctte, they are now considering
various ways to solicit candidatures. You'll here from them about this
soon, I suspect.
- In the meantime, monthly IRC meetings of the tech-ctte are continuing,
as you might have noticed from tech-ctte decision reports posted on
this list. As it seemed to be lingering, at the last meeting I've
solicited progress on the [Python maintenance issue][4].
- The auditors have noticed the unclear situation of the Policy Editor
delegation, which seems to rely on a "base" delegation dating back to
Antony Towns' office and various subsequent delegation "patches".
After discussion with Russ Allbery I've then proceeded to a [public
"ping"][5] to assess the interest of current editors in continuing
their work in such capacity, and encourage new volunteers to apply as
editors. Based on the feedback I've got, I'm now preparing a new
Policy Editor delegation.
[4]: http://bugs.debian.org/573745
[5]: https://lists.debian.org/debian-policy/2012/08/msg00058.html
Legal and RC fun
================
- Solicited by Jonathan Nieder and Helge Kreutzmann, I've looked into
#555168 and sought legal advice to answer various questions related to
the non-copyrightability of locale data. Aaron Williamson of SFLC has
been blazing fast in answering them (thanks!), and Jonathan and Helge
has now all the needed information to help addressing that (RC) issue.
Keep an eye on the [bug log][6] for more details.
[6]: http://bugs.debian.org/555168
Hardware
========
- I've approved buying 6 console servers to improve DSA ability to act
on remote machines, without having to bother^Wrely on local admins
when not strictly needed. ~550 USD well spent.
See? It's been quick(er)!
Talk to you here next month, with a much lower count of Wheezy RC Bugs
on the horizon, hopefully. Cheers.
PS the boring day-to-day activity log for August 2012 is available at
<master:/srv/leader/news/bits-from-the-DPL.txt.201208>
--
Stefano Zacchiroli . . . . . . . zack@upsilon.cc . . . . o . . . o . o
Maître de conférences . . . . . http://upsilon.cc/zack . . . o . . . o o
Debian Project Leader . . . . . . @zack on identi.ca . . o o o . . . o .
« the first rule of tautology club is the first rule of tautology club »